OCTOber 201 2 Q A N TA S 127

There’s nothing like red dust and 130km/h road signs to put a smile on your speedo. Michael Stahl heads off-road to Uluru – via Lake eyre.

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TalkaboutWhat’s new in motoring, retail, books, technology and the arts.✈ 127 MoToriNg / off-road outback ✈ 135 coMedy / sydney laugh fest✈ 143 weAverS’ TAleS / tapestry magic✈ 150 brighT ideAS / vaccination patch✈ 155 MoToriNg / electric renault✈ 157 TechNology / ultrabooks rule✈ 159 bookS / turn the page ✈ 160 MoST wANTed / luxe life

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The Red Centre: Uluru, Northern Territory

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From top: Flinders Ranges, South Australia;

Lake Eyre shoreline; Mutonia Sculpture

Park, Alberrie Creek, west of Marree, SA

in the past they’ve been scorned as an introduced species, accused of over-feeding and destroying their adopted environment. camels, cats and rabbits get a bad rap in the outback, but some parts of urban australia have been no less hostile towards the 4Wd “sports utility vehicle”. in truth, most suvs have evolved beyond the charges of being agricultural, inefficient and unsafe. many share their engines and running gear with mainstream passenger car models, and microchips now provide the light off-roading ability that once required heavy mechanical components. australians are now buying more suvs than ever before – currently 28 per cent of our new vehicle market, up from 19 per cent just five years ago. and with advances in communications and satellite navigation making inland travel less daunting, the australian outback now truly begins at your driveway.

light, luxury suvs such as audi’s new Q3 – a cousin to the a3 hatchback – easily have the long-distance touring comfort and fuel efficiency for the strzelecki, birdsville and oodnadatta tracks (in dry weather, at least). the top-level audi Q3 petrol-turbo is to be put to the test en route to uluru. the Q3 range includes a lone front-wheel-drive version; the four-wheel drives offer the choice of a turbo-diesel and two turbo-petrol engines. diesels have inherently better efficiency, particularly for constant-speed cruising. but the 155kW, seven-speed s-tronic with sports suspension – the hot-hatch of luxury suvs – is too much fun to resist.

adelaide, having the desert almost on its doorstep, is a great place to start. the direct route to central australia is the stuart highway, which hugs the gulf of st vincent and spencer gulf to port augusta and was only fully sealed in the mid-1980s.

a more scenic route travels parallel to the east, via the flinders ranges, to the unsealed oodnadatta track. skirting the western fringe of lake eyre, you can cut due west to meet up with the stuart highway at coober pedy.

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the clare valley is a lazy 140km drive due north of adelaide. in 1851, the Jesuit priests of sevenhill planted the first vineyards here; today the region is celebrated for fine wines, creative cuisine and earnest hospitality. clare to hawker is most easily accomplished along the rm Williams Way (b80). a detour to the b82 west touches the foot of the flinders ranges at port germein. from the sleepy town’s 1.5km-long jetty there’s a view across spencer gulf to Weeroona island, dotted with the seaside homes of miners from roxby downs and leigh creek, both more than 300km inland.

back on the road, just two hours later, the landscape has changed completely. approaching hawker, an abandoned stone homestead at Wirreanda creek glows orange in the afternoon sun, evoking images of cracked, dusty faces squinting across the cassis-coloured soil. the ruined stone buildings and their lonely headstones tell of courageous families who made a life here in the mid-19th century.

it is still unforgiving country. a planned side-trip from hawker to Wilpena to take in the 4Wd tracks of the bunyeroo and brachina gorges, begins with checking the road-advisory signs. rains turn these tracks into quagmires; creek beds become impassable torrents. a pleasant dirt-road detour can easily become a survival situation.

along the dry, well-graded, twisting bunyeroo gorge track, over ridges and through stony creek beds, the delicate faces of yellow-footed rock wallabies watch as we dawdle by. the more finicky brachina gorge, where the creek beds pass between chocolate-flake walls, requires straddling a few large puddles and skirting some protruding rocks. there is also an absence of mobile reception, the first since leaving adelaide.

the sun is setting on the sealed b83, near the first night’s stop at parachilna. We’re 500km from adelaide. it is merely the end of a day, yet the vast, pink-orange glow

lighting halos on the grey-bellied clouds may be painted on the memory forever. parachilna is best greeted in the dark. no offence to the prairie hotel and the town’s half-dozen empty shacks: by night, the lit verandah of the classic, outback pub distracts from the award-winning accommodation that has an international reputation among film and television producers. publicans ross and Jane fargher of nearby nilpena station bought the prairie hotel 21 years ago. “it just shone like a beacon as an opportunity,” says Jane, of the hotel’s loca-tion between the flinders ranges and the desert of lake torrens.

“there’s a lot of talk of regional hotels closing down in small communities and we’re a hotel in a town with a population of two – and the two locals [one of them, landscape photographer peter macdonald] aren’t even regulars here.”

of the 12 rooms within the hotel, eight are partially sunk into the ground in an award-winning new wing, designed by architect John maitland, that exploits the insulation properties of the earth. the prairie hotel’s other talking point is its menu. the “feral food” option is bound to upset some. it is a succulent celebration of australian fauna and flora, from kangaroo chorizo to curried goat, and on to stewed quandongs for dessert.

ferally fed and sublimely slept, we’re off north again, past the company-confected township and coalfield of leigh creek. the bitu-men (and mobile coverage) ends at lyndhurst, the strzelecki track

striking off to the east. the oodnadatta track is straight on to marree.about 130 years ago, the town of farina was a bustling railhead on

the ghan railway, with more than 300 permanent residents. forty years ago it was abandoned. but on this day the ghost town is alive, its 1888 bakery producing delicious pasties.

melbourne caravan dealer tom harding fell in love with farina over several outback caravan tours. “i felt i owed something to the outback. i wanted to do something, but had no idea what that was,” he says, standing in what looks like an archaeological site.

the farina restoration group he created is “stabilising” – rather than restoring – the town’s half-dozen ruins. since 2008, its 60 volunteers, mainly energetic retirees, have come to camp and work here for three weeks each year.

the outback serves up such surreality as a matter of course. Witness a three-storey, cubist-looking yorkshire terrier (sculptor robin cooke intended it to be a dingo, but the moniker “big dog” has stuck); and a pair of hand-holding aeroplanes rising from the dirt at mutonia sculpture park; an outdoor museum of crumpled Woomera rocket range jetsam at the William creek hotel.

then there’s the lake that’s causing a stir for actually having water in it. most years, lake eyre does well to receive 125mm. in the first quarter of 2012 the local catchment to the west and south received 400mm, which added to the floodwater from two years of deluges

Algae in the water gives Lake Eyre a brown tinge from above; approaching Coober Pedy (left)

AlwAyS iN good TASTe...Why not plan a Clare Valley pit stop? Visit...

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MoToriNg exTrA talkabout

in Queensland and northern nsW. the adjacent 25,000sq km anna creek cattle station is running 17,000 head of cattle. four years ago it struggled to sustain just 700 in an area almost the size of belgium.

michael urquhart, 27, moved to William creek from brisbane just a year ago. he’s 1000 single-engined hours along the route to his ultimate goal: to fly internationally for Qantas. William creek’s aeroplane population outnumbers its humans, 18 to 12. from 500 feet up, urquhart never tires of the landscape’s ever-changing palette. “i’m out over [lake eyre] basically every day, and every day the colours are different, the water is lying in different places. When the pelicans come and nest in their thousands, it’s an unforgettable sight.”

being now 1400km from adelaide, there is certainly a sense of commitment: this is deep in the outback. With that realisation comes some healthy trepidation. the audi’s trip computer predicts 300km of touring range and coober pedy is only 160km away. but outback wisdom is to grab fuel whether you need it or not.

it’s an entertaining drive west towards the stuart highway. the slippery, ball-bearing surface showcases the automotive technology of electronic stability program (esp). this network of sensors detects when the car is sliding and applies individual brakes to correct it. it is a tonic for driving long distances on unmade roads.

the gently undulating red earth, awash with the pale purple hue of drying grass and greener tufts, is soon pockmarked with mounds of dirt. coober pedy is a patchy, pastel oasis that provides about 80 per cent of the world’s opals. the town’s name (the aboriginal kupa piti means “white man’s hole”) comes from the practice of burrowing homes into the soft, pink sandstone. today, more than half the town’s population lives in “dugouts” scooped into the sides of hills and cliffs.

the desert cave hotel adds four-star comfort to the experience, which is notable for the rough, strawberry-ripple walls and the absence of windows. above-ground rooms are maintained for the claustrophobic.

the umoona opal mine and museum is mandatory. proprietor yanni athanasiadis, a pillar of the town’s tourism and opal industries, came from greece to try his luck for a year. he has stayed for 40. his friend and fellow greek émigré, george azlamatsis, has gone from scooping $800,000 in opals in one nine-month period to three-year stretches without making a cent. they have both seen the highs and the lows.

“the most important thing is, you have to be a gambler,” athanasiadis says. however, mining, to a younger generation, now means a six-figure salary and the guarantee of a week off in every three. azlamatsis looks down hutchinson street, with its greek, indian, italian and chinese restaurants, and shakes his head. “i think that when yanni and me die, this dies.”

it’s a long day’s drive of 740km from coober pedy to uluru, although thankfully all on tarmac. outside the marla roadhouse (“the middle of everywhere”) near the nt border, the little off-roader is put into perspective next to a trio of enormous eight-wheel-drive army trucks, each bearing a 62-tonne abrams tank. the audi can make use of the nt’s 130km/h highway speed limit. the higher limit is not extended to the more heavily trafficked 244km of the lasseter highway, which passes the mesa-shaped mount conner en route to uluru and the ayers rock resort.

the red centre is, right now, looking decidedly green. With good rain in the first few months of the year, the rolling hills almost resemble pastures, with several khaki shades of grass and spinifex, and the dark trunks and dr seuss silhouettes of the desert oak trees.

a well-earned rest at ayers rock resort awaits, together with the incomparable majesty and spiritual magnetism of uluru. after eight hours of driving, rich images scrolling endlessly past one after another on yet another cloudless, 24-degree day, there could be no better entertainment than the sound of silence: dinner in the desert, the sun setting on uluru and then a guided tour of the cosmos. c